It Takes a Village to Increase a JJ Wetherholt

JJ Wetherholt is in an uncommon place. A 3rd-year finance scholar at West Virginia College with an curiosity in math who as soon as thought of going to legislation college, Wetherholt is leaving school early, and says his mother and father couldn’t be extra proud.

As prestigious and profitable as a profession in legislation or finance may be, neither holds a candle to skilled baseball, and Wetherholt is likely one of the main candidates for the highest choose on this yr’s draft.

Along with tutorial All-Huge 12 and All-American honors, Wetherholt hit .373/.471/.632 with 29 homers, 56 stolen bases, and extra walks than strikeouts in 143 profession school video games. A compact, sinewy 5-foot-10, 190-pound second baseman with nice bat pace from an open, left-handed stance, he’s a lock to turn into WVU’s highest draft choose ever. (The report is at present eleventh general, shared by Alek Manoah in 2019 and right-hander Chris Enochs in 1997.)

JJ Wetherholt (SS/2B, @WVUBaseball) bought all of this one and he knew it. Introduced at 460 toes. Hope you admire it as a lot as he did. ? pic.twitter.com/ZsuRV3O0bN

— Burke Granger (@burkegranger) May 12, 2024

When he’s on, Wetherholt’s easy swing permits him to hit the ball arduous each to the pull facet and the other discipline. He’s bought good plate self-discipline and fast fingers; his leg kick makes it appear to be he’s going to place his entrance foot down too early, however he at all times appears to make a easy weight switch.

Wetherholt says he discovered an excellent deal from his hitting coaches and his older brother, however: “My best swing inspiration that I had rising up was Robinson Canó. He was my favourite participant.”

Canó performed 17 years within the huge leagues, made eight All-Star groups, and hit 335 dwelling runs. If he hadn’t taken two prolonged PED suspensions (and suffered the commensurate reputational penalty along with lacking greater than 200 video games), Canó would’ve made a run at 3,000 hits and had a stable Corridor of Fame case. So I wish to make it clear off the proverbial bat that I’m not making that comparability to any novice participant.

However a bat-first left-handed second baseman with plus hit, plus plate self-discipline, and common or higher energy isn’t an unreasonable expectation for Wetherholt. Like Canó, Wetherholt leaves one thing to be desired defensively at second, although the West Virginia star is quicker now than Canó ever was. He’s adamant that he can play shortstop, and it’s an excellent wager that whoever picks him will a minimum of give him an opportunity to fail there. You may say no matter you need from the draft podium, however Wetherholt is extra a shortstop than Spencer Torkelson was a 3rd baseman when the Tigers introduced him as such within the 2020 draft.

In a draft class like final yr’s, positional issues like which may have relegated Wetherholt to the again half of the highest 10, however within the absence of a Paul Skenes or Dylan Crews on the high of this yr’s board, the 2024 class is a bit more open. Wetherholt is certainly one of a minimum of 5 school gamers with a non-zero likelihood of going first general.

Wetherholt had the chance to cement himself as the very best participant on this class — he was no. 1 on The Board heading into this season — however he’s had an eventful 2024: A hamstring harm suffered the primary week of the yr price him 24 video games, or 40% of the Mountaineers’ season. And as soon as he returned, he didn’t exhibit fairly the identical pull energy he confirmed when he hit .449/.517/.787 as a sophomore.

However, the ‘Eers not solely made the NCAA event however received the Tucson Regional because the no. 3 seed earlier than falling within the Tremendous Regional to North Carolina, which additionally introduced an finish to the 12-year tenure of retiring head coach Randy Mazey.

“After the final sport was over, that’s an evening you don’t actually sleep,” Wetherholt says. “So, yeah. It was… it was powerful. Dang, school ball’s performed. No extra taking part in with my teammates, Skip, all of the coaches there for positive. It’s powerful, but it surely’s part of life… I might’ve beloved to go to Omaha. That may’ve been superb, however typically it’s not written in your plan, so that you’ve simply bought to stream with it.”

So as a substitute of going to Omaha, Wetherholt went to Phoenix for per week of staff interviews — although not as many as you’d suppose, he says — and media commitments as he prepares for the subsequent step in his profession.

Wetherholt’s journey begins in Mars, Pennsylvania, a tiny suburb of Pittsburgh that unexpectedly became a bit of a baseball hotbed. Wetherholt performed journey ball with Drake LaRoche and 2023 no. 6 general choose Jacob Wilson when the latter two’s fathers performed for the Pirates, and his highschool coach, Andy Bednar, is the daddy of Pirates nearer David Bednar and 2021 first-rounder Will Bednar. (That top college staff: the Mars Space Excessive College Figthin’ Planets. I checked; it’s a coed establishment, and never an all-boys’ campus with a sister college referred to as Venus Space Excessive College.)

It’s there that Wetherholt bought his nickname; his full title is Jonathan David however a youth coach began calling him JJ, after the kids’s cartoon character Jay-Jay the Jet Airplane, and the moniker caught. He additionally discovered learn how to hit left-handed from his brother, Brandon, who performed Division II baseball at Gannon College.

“I discovered a lot from him: learn how to be a child, learn how to be a person, learn how to play ball, learn how to work,” Wetherholt says. “So, yeah, I modeled a ton of my sport after him. And simply being round him on a regular basis, I needed to play like an older child.”

Talking from private expertise, I additionally taught my way more gifted youthful brother learn how to play baseball and keep in mind vividly the second when he was capable of beat me persistently. I requested Wetherholt when that second got here for him and Brandon, and his admiration continued to shine by means of in his reply.

“I believe it was final yr,” Wetherholt says. “Freshman yr I used to be fairly good, however he was hitting .330 with double-digit homers in D-II ball. Final yr, he and I each had huge years, however that was the place he gave me the crown. He was like, ‘Dang, bro, how are you doing this?’”

Speaking to Wetherholt, it’s clear he understands that producing a giant league ballplayer is a collaborative effort. Not solely does the participant himself must have the expertise and drive, he needs to be surrounded by individuals who put him able to succeed, which is what Wetherholt had in his little baseball hotbed exterior of Pittsburgh. He says he performed with the identical group of youngsters in journey ball from age 10 to 18, and by the tip of that point, the staff had turn into like a household.

“Folks cared. They actually cared about me as a participant and my improvement, they usually cared in regards to the staff, the world simply making children higher,” he says. “And that was a cool scene. You had mother and father that had been working 9-to-5, some would take day out of their day not solely to work with their very own children, however work with me and the opposite children, take time to ensure the youth applications are working properly and that we have now assets to coach and turn into higher gamers… They needed to set us as much as play school ball. That was candy, and I’m tremendous, tremendous fortunate to have that.”

That features Wetherholt’s personal mother and father. He says they, “made an excellent dwelling, however a number of the cash that they spent on me to play ball, they’d have preferred to have been capable of hold.”

He says it’s solely since he bought to varsity that he’s come to comprehend how a lot his mother and father’ assist has helped him.

“You at all times need your mother and father to do extra for you. Give me this, give me that, why aren’t you right here, blah, blah, blah,” he says. “As I’ve gotten older and my tasks have gone up, and I see how busy individuals are and the way blessed I’m for them to be in my life, that’s after I realized, like, dang, they actually put up with a lot… I at all times apologize for being a bit rugrat rising up and placing my mother and father by means of rather a lot. However that’s a part of being a child — you’re studying and also you don’t know you’re doing dumb stuff.”

I requested Wetherholt how his mother and father are whereas watching him play, having invested a lot in his baseball schooling. And whereas he stresses that they’re extremely pleased with him, it looks like there are most likely moments once they want he’d gone to legislation college in any case.

“My mother freaks out,” he says. “And my dad does too, a bit bit. He doesn’t actually perceive the sport utterly. He performed school soccer, and each sport of soccer you’re getting the possibility to indicate that you simply’re the alpha athlete. However in baseball, you might be the very best participant on the sector, and you might simply have a nasty day and go 0-for-4 with three Ks, no matter… However my mother, she will get like a nervous wreck. Once I get two strikes on me, she closes her eyes. She simply needs me to do good.”

Having gotten that assist rising up, Wetherholt appears to seek out group wherever he goes.

It was attention-grabbing to listen to Griffin Burkholder, a speedy highschool outfield prospect from Northern Virginia, speak about Wetherholt. Burkholder is a possible Day Two draft choose who’s dedicated to WVU, the place — if he doesn’t go professional this yr — he’ll be Wetherholt’s inheritor presumptive because the Mountaineers’ subsequent star.

The mix isn’t the glitzy high-profile occasion that MLB may maybe need it to be, but it surely’s nonetheless the most important assortment of novice baseball expertise within the nation this time of yr, with the attainable exception of the School World Sequence. Each staff despatched entrance workplace representatives, and a number of other notable ex-big leaguers — Nick Swisher, Nelson Cruz, Harold Reynolds — had been in attendance to participate in TV protection. So I requested the 18-year-old Burkholder who he’d been most excited to see, and he stated Wetherholt.

“I’ve met him earlier than, after I was committing to West Virginia. We additionally share an adviser, in order that’s how we met,” Burkholder says. “We labored out collectively as soon as in Philly, and I bought to hang around with him a bit bit again on the lodge right here in between interviews. I bought to choose his mind a bit bit about the entire course of he’s going by means of, and simply his, clearly, his nice final couple years at West Virginia.”

The outgoing Mountaineers star is in an unusually fortuitous place. He’s a contender for the no. 1 choose within the draft in a yr by which his father’s favourite staff — the Cleveland Guardians — are choosing first.

What occurs if that falls by means of? I joked. Would his dad pin up a photograph of Charlie Condon on the dartboard within the storage? Wetherholt was fast to say no, as a result of he’d come to love and respect Condon a lot when the 2 performed collectively on the collegiate nationwide staff final summer time. He rattled off a listing of half a dozen names, lots of them high prospects on this yr’s draft, who he was joyful to reconnect with as they head towards draft day.

“You can say it’s competitors, however God, I’m rooting for these children simply as a lot as I’m rooting for me,” he says. “They’re such good folks, and we had such an excellent expertise taking part in collectively that I couldn’t sit right here and be like, ‘Don’t take them, take me.’”

In about three weeks, the wait shall be over and the thriller settled: Wetherholt will know the place he’s going. Within the meantime, there are extra conferences, extra coaching, and a chance to take a breath earlier than setting off on what he hopes is a prolonged skilled profession.

I ask each prospect what they’re planning to splurge on as soon as they get their signing bonus. (As an apart, Burkholder gave my favourite reply of the week: The driving force’s facet air-con on his 15-year-old pickup truck has stopped working, so if he goes professional, a part of his signing bonus is earmarked for getting that fastened.)

“Possibly a brand new putter. I want a brand new putter,” Wetherholt says. “Would possibly take a golf journey or one thing… I’m fairly boring. I don’t stay a loopy life. It’s like fishing, golf, baseball, some video video games.”

He ought to get pleasure from that boring life whereas he can. If he will get his want and has his title referred to as first on July 14, Wetherholt’s life goes to get very attention-grabbing. Nonetheless, it’s what he — alongside together with his household and pals — has labored for years to realize. And it beats cramming for the LSAT.